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What would the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and De Broglie wavelength be for a baseball that is not moving (i.e has zero velocity)?

Also, since macroscopic objects like baseballs have extremely small wavelengths, would this mean a high frequency? If so, would this frequency not be dangerous as it would greater than gamma and X-rays?

DanielSank
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A first point to make is that matter waves are not electromagnetic in nature so there is no issue with people irradiating themselves with all their macroscopic possessions.

HUP says that $$\Delta p \Delta x \geq \frac{\hbar}{2}$$ When you think of this lower bound for macroscopic objects it is essentially meaningless as $\hbar$ is an incredibly small measure. As an aside a macroscopic object is constantly interacting with its environment (photons scattering off the surface etc) these interactions would cause the wave function of the object to collapse repeatedly into one state or another. Therefore QM isn't really the right language to describe the dynamics of a baseball.

Generally for very slow moving large objects the matter wave has a tiny wavelength which precludes us from being able to observe quantum effects.

ChrisM
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  • Just curious what x would be for an macro object like ball if the ball is at reset ? – George Feb 21 '15 at 20:15
  • if you think about trying to measure the position of something there will be an error on your measurement device which is many orders of magnitude greater than the error in position for a macroscopic object, therefore we may as well let $\Delta x$ and $\Delta p$ go to zero as $\hbar$ may as well be zero. Sometimes people say classical physics is the $\hbar \rightarrow 0$ limit of QM but I don't particularly like this idea as it gets you into trouble elsewhere, but it is useful here. – ChrisM Feb 21 '15 at 20:36